Reading Response #4: Microblogging

Chapter 4 of the Briggs text is about microblogging, and especially Twitter. Read the Pew Research Internet Project’s Social Media Update 2014 to get a broader sense of who’s on social media and which platforms they prefer.

As much as journalists use Twitter (which is a lot), it’s not the best way to reach some audiences. Read A Teenager’s View on Social Media Part 1 and Part 2, written by a University of Texas student. What do you think, does he nail it? Or is your experience different?

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14 thoughts on “Reading Response #4: Microblogging”

As mentioned in class, the articles written by someone my age were on point. He really classified every generation into what social media platform gets their attention. Microblogging on twitter doesn’t reach a lot of parents since they’re mostly on Facebook, which is the best way for them to get any information. I briefly had a conversation with my father and had mentioned a news organization tweeting and he had no idea what a tweet was since he’s on Facebook day-to-day. I think twitter is perfect for microblogging in the sense that tweets are stacked on a feed and you can favorite things to read further into or share with others. In my opinion, information gets lost amongst Facebook easier because user’s post photos, albums, videos, and a lot of very social event sort of stuff. Instagram is definitely a platform that a lot of ages are moving towards, which is good but it’s not necessarily a place I would say to “microblog.” You can post photos and videos but I don’t think photos are as engaging and have the ability to give a perfect glimpse into a story or sort of journal entry. So again, my experience is the same as the young student classifying each social media platform. I think we all have established what generation uses what platform more. Each platform has their own ways of microblogging which is that “ambience” Briggs had mentioned in Chapter four. The only way these days to get news and ideas out their is to direct it towards a much wider audience because we solely rely on our internet and social media!

I agree 100% with Andrew Watts. The first part of his opinion article, he talks about interactive social mediums, which are popular among teenagers. With each description of each social media, he explains what they are used for and how the teen audience uses it. The most known one is Facebook and his opinion on that is spot on. He explains how many people just log on for a while and log off, only using the messenger app which “provide the means to talk to those people who you weren’t really comfortable with asking for their number but comfortable enough to send them a friend request”. The next one he mentions is Instagram, stating that it is the most used medium for teenagers. I completely agree with him because it isn’t as general on Facebook. Instead of adding old elementary friends or unwanted high school friends, you can choose who to follow and who follows you. Instead of posting an entire album about a recent vacation, the user can post a picture collage with their favorite pictures of their trip. I personally don’t use twitter, but I do feel that many people use it for quick updates on their current day, mood or repost of others they follow. When it comes to snapchat, his explanation is so right. It’s a medium where the user won’t get judged for what content they post; their isn’t a way for someone to comment on their story. Tumblr isn’t so popular for the early teens, but definitely for 15-19 year olds. It’s the same with Yik Yak; it pertains more towards college students who want to know gossip, latest information of campus emergencies or funny jokes. In his second opinion article, he mentioned other social mediums that are helpful and examples of other minor apps. With Youtube, he talks how it has changed the world and it truly has. It doesn’t have a specific audience because it can be used for anyone. Just type in what you want to see in the search bar and done. From tutorials on projects to entertainment, it has anything and everything. Vine is popular, but mostly for viewing. He mentioned how it can be hard for a new user to try to become famous and when they don’t, they get discouraged and delete their account. I agree with him when he says people mostly use to follow popular users since their content is funny. As for some of the others he lists (Plague, Quora, Swarm and Ello), those are the least known or have already had their 5 minutes of fame. In the end of his post, he explains how social networking affects their audience and include examples. He explained that what they did to capture their audience’s attention was be unique and out of the box. With Taco Bell’s marketing campaign, it worked successfully because they got people to pay attention to them.

After reading Andrew Watt’s article , i must say that I did enjoy reading his point of view on our generation when it comes to social media and how we’re using it. I personally believe that whenever my friends and I need to look up information about anyone, (celebrities, family, and friends) we go straight to Facebook or twitter. Facebook and twitter are the holy grail of staying connected and being social with people. These social websites have everything ! Briggs says that micro-blogging is like participating in the “live web” because you’re sharing tons of information in such a short period of real time. He considers Facebook and Twitter to be micro blogging and i totally agree. In these social networks, you’re sharing videos, pictures, tweeting what’s going on, being updated about people’s lives, and conversing with others all within a couple of hours.

Now lets say you want to build a music fan base or customers to your business. Twitter is great place for that too! You can literally just tag people in a post that include the link of your music or business. I get tagged on twitter in endless posts of artists who are trying to get their music out there and build a fan base. This is a great website overall for being social, staying connect, and building a larger audience.

In conclusion, this is a fast pace generation, we like staying connected and being informed as quick as possible. Like Michelle pointed out, Briggs says that journalist and news orgs use social media because it helps them find and report news as quick as possible, because we want every type of info or news as quick as we can get it.

I think his views are very accurate. While I was reading his article, it made me think about when I was transitioning from Myspace to Facebook because like he said everyone had it except for me. And its like he said it was cool for a while, then it became flooded with ads and links to other site that clogged up my newsfeed. Instagram is one of my favorites mostly because you don’t have to deal with the constant links people share and the layout is much more simpler than Facebook. I also liked what he had to say about what makes some social media apps successful such as giving the person an incentive to download the app and also being innovated enough to generate interest.

Briggs mentions that journalists and news orgs. use social media because it helps them report breaking news and promote other news reports. They do this because microblogging isn’t just for journalists: it is for the readers too. Readers and journalists share information in real time as part of the “live web” system. This generation has become all about the here and now, people do not want to wait for anything. So microblogging is popular for audiences who want to know what is happening in that exact moment. According to the Social Media Update 2014, even adults and seniors are turning to social media to broaden communication. So it is not just this generation and young audiences who use social media outlets. I agree with parts of “A Teenager’s View on social Media.” I love social media. I am a communications major. Facebook is an older outlet, people are over it yet can’t leave it alone. In my opinion, if our moms, dad, uncles, aunts, and grandparents were not on Facebook, it would still be used to the extremes it once was. Instagram is definitely growing in popularity, but I do think younger people prefer it because they just aren’t really interested in news. Again. they want short form instant communication: You see a picture, you like it, you don;t like it, you read about it(maybe) and then you move on. I actually enjoy the articles I see on Facebook and Twitter because I can pick and choose what I want to see.I don’t use vine. I think it’s good for funny memes and rehearsed amateur skits. I use youtube to recall clips from a movie, to play a song I don’t have on iTunes, or to recall something that was played on television that I want to show with someone else. And FORGET about Tinder. To each his/her own, but I’m not really about the whole instant dating. I think bottom line, young people have become pretty lazy and this 19 year old boy is a little immature with his thoughts on social media outlets. This is because my experience is different, and maybe a few years ago I would have agreed.

I agree with Briggs that microblogging is basically participating in the “live web” because you’re sharing that information quickly and in real time, and people are constantly feeding off of it and keeping up to date. It’s also the fastest way to send out or receive news, and the most concise. Twitter is considered microblogging, and I love it. I’ve been an avid user for years. I was so surprised to see that only 23% of people used it according to the Pew Research. I find it so effective in terms of getting news out and receiving it.

As for the student at the University of Texas, I complete agree with his two posts. They are spot on. In the first part, his analysis of almost all social media sites is very accurate, especially with FaceBook as the “awkward dinner party we all can’t leave” and Tumblr when he mentioned it’s like the secret society everyone is in but doesn’t talk about. For the second part, I could relate to the beginning but as the list went down, the more unfamiliar the social apps and sites became. I haven’t even heard of most of them until this post. But when he talks about loving Vine but not having it as an app, that is very true. I usually twitter search “funny vines” or watch them as they come up randomly on my timeline. Overall, he really did nail it. Very good analysis.

After reading both parts of “Read a Teenager’s View on Social Media Part 1 and Part 2,” by a student at a University of Texas, I can honestly say that he/she hits the nail on its head, although I can more-so relate to Part 1 than Part 2 because Part 1 consists of social media that I frequently use such as Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. Part 2 focuses on Youtube, Reddit and other social media platforms that I rarely use.

I feel like this blog post really validated my feelings on social media because there were times where I was trying to find out the purpose of having social media platforms as young adults. What’s the point of having a Facebook as well as Twitter and Instagram? In the blog, the student wrote “Facebook is something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can’t really leave. It’s weird and can even be annoying to have Facebook at times. That being said, if you don’t have a Facebook, that’s even weird and annoying. Weird because of the social pressure behind the question, ‘Everyone has Facebook, why don’t you?’ and annoying because you’ll have to answer that to just about everyone in classes you meet who makes an attempt to friend you or find you on there.” This basically describes my life about Facebook because I signed up to get a Facebook account exactly during my middle school years because everyone else was doing it and I just recently deactivated mine, so I have to go through the whole “weird and annoying” thing as we speak.

The Snapchat section was my favorite one because everything that was mentioned in that section is what I deal with on a daily basis. It’s funny because about three minutes ago I was going through my friends’ Snapchat stories and it was all about partying. I even wrote a blog post about that a week ago on social media anxiety that relates to Snapchat stories and partying, but that’s another story. Basically it’s all about partying that my friend’s post, and that is pretty much all that is included in the Snapchat section and all of it is true.

The Instagram section is so relatable because everyone edits their pictures to make it look perfect and people always wonder why someone gets the amount of likes they get… like it matters… but this is all very true. Likes matter if you have an Instagram apparently!
Lastly, I could also relate to what was said about Twitter because, honestly, no one really even knows the purpose of Twitter. In the post the author said, “There are then three main groups of Twitter users: the ones who use it to complain/express themselves, the ones who tweet with the assumption that their prospective employer will eventually see whatever they are saying, and the ones who simply look at other Tweets and do the occasional RT.” All very true, and I am definitely one who is placed in the use-it-to-complain/express-themselves group.

I’m actually very happy that there are posts like this online because there are many people, like me, who are still trying to understand social media’s purpose within young adults and why people have some of the platforms that they have.

From the reading for this week I found the term “beatblogging” to be very interesting. I had never really heard this term before but I really like this idea of creating a network of people who are basically experts in a certain area and then working together to spread news and write.

“A beat blog gives a newsroom a vehicle for providing in-depth coverage that the general-interest approach of a newspaper generally doesn’t allow” this quote from Steve Buttry was one that I really enjoyed when reading this section about beatblogging. I think that this form of journalism is a great way to really hone in on specific topics and it makes it easier to really find content that you care about.

Reading about crowd-sourcing in a journalistic sense was also very interesting to me because the only way I had heard of it before was in a marketing sense. As a marketing student I had seen examples of this before, the main example being Lay’s Flavor competition that they’ve done over the past couple of years. Reading about crowd-sourcing in the sense of journalism was very interesting.

As for the social media article from Andrew Watts I really enjoyed reading them. I thought his critiques and reasons for why our generation is on each platform were post on for the most part. For Facebook for instance, I actually do not have a Facebook. I have never had one and I have never had any interest in having one so I cannot necessarily relate to the feeling of having that Facebook but I do know from what I’ve seen from friends and family how they feel towards it and how they use it.

I felt like the Tumblr and Instagram and Twitter comments were pretty spot on as well. I know for tumblr its a great place to just be able to blog about interests without people really knowing who you are as was mentioned. Twitter also becomes a place where you can in a way form networks. I see a lot of people who kind of have their personal account that they try and make more professional and then there is another account that is more ‘fandom” oriented which they can use to talk about movies, actors, books, shows, etc that they like. it can serve as an escape from the real world and its pretty cool.

But also with Twitter you can form professional networks. While I agree Twitter is a great place to gather news and such, I also think its a good place to build professional networks. Being a marketing student interested in sports marketing, I joined an organization called “NACMA” (National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators) and part of the benefit of this organization are these chats that happen on Sunday and Monday nights on Twitter. Industry professionals join in and ask questions regarding the industry, practices, marketing ideas, issues going on, and all kinds of stuff. Even as a student you can join in and interact with these professionals and really get to know a lot which I think is great.

I think Andrew Watts almost nails it. I think he makes some very valid points and I can recognize both my own and my friends habits in his description of each social media site. I do not agree with his statement that you get less “showed down your throat” on Instagram then you do on Facebook. There are so many posts about people showing of their every meal, every workout etc. it can get almost as annoying as people posting about their day on Facebook. I feel as people post more now on Instagram then on Facebook, that Instragram has slowly became the site were people “over share”, but the good thing is it’s not a lot of information that can be given with each photo, which makes it easier to scroll past.
I also think YikYak is taking over some of the Twitter crowd. On YikYak you can usually hit more of your audience, without putting your identity to it. So I see Twitter becoming more as a place you just follow certain people, often celebrities, but not post too much of your own tweets since you can just YikYak that instead. Watts also mentions WhatsApp is mostly used to contact people when you are abroad or someone else is, I think this is partly true. I still think Imessage and Facebook chats cover most of it, the only time I use WhatsApp is when I contact friends in a different country when it’s something I need to talk to them immediately, which isn’t that often, otherwise Facebook chat, Skype, FaceTime and Imessage usually covers the rest. Otherwise I think Watts is on point with all of the applications and social media sites that I have used or know of.

I was surprised when I saw on Pew Research Center’s Social Media report that only 23% of online users use Twitter. It’s the social media network that I spend the most time on and it’s honestly where I go for all of my news on a day to day basis. I was also a little surprised when I read Andrew Watts’ “A Teenager’s View on Social Media” because it became clear to me that I am the type of user he describes who consumes information and occasionally retweets a post that resonates with me. I also thought of myself as an avid Twitter user but in all honesty, I read much more than I post or interact with others. When I realized this, it made reading Briggs’ chapter a little more difficult because as much as I love Twitter and as much time as I spend on it, it became apparent that I’m not using this platform in the way a “microblogger” would. However one quote that I did relate to was on page 94, which said: “One great thing about Twitter – and this is why it’s so useful for student journalists – is that after a while it trains you to look for interesting things around you.” I have begun to feel this since I started my blog for this class. As I scroll through Twitter now, I notice myself looking for topics I can write about.

I definitely believe that Andrew Watts’ take on social media use is representative of teenage and college individuals. Although I am not a very active social media user myself, the functionality of each of these applications and sites was captured very well by Watts. His description of Facebook as almost a virtual phone book was especially accurate. Most social media users our age began with Facebook, so regardless of its active use, it still serves as a way of locating individuals and reaching out to them in a less forward and aggressive manner.

In touching on the Briggs’ reading on microblogging, I definitely see Twitter shifting away from casual, social media use, and being utilized more for news, celebrity, and entertainment updates. I, myself, have found Twitter to be extremely useful for these purposes, and rarely check it for posts by familial individuals. Twitter’s strength is in its convenient, concise, and quick updates–often much more one way than two-way communication. While responding to individuals can be useful in gaining information and followers (as was mentioned by both Briggs and Watts), the average user consumes the information for what it is. They might retweet if they agree or find relevance in a post, but interaction often stops there, unless explicitly requested.

I had never heard of the term “microblogging” before reading Brigg’s Chapter 4. I think it is an interesting topic because like it says in the Chapter it had taken months, sometimes years, for journalists to start blogging their news. Yet journalists were ready to accept Twitter and the 140-character limit. Ellyn Angelotti a digital trend and social media faculty says, “The news cycle is now interactive. Journalists use microblogging to publish, share, and find out information, links, photos, videos, and polls with large audiences from anywhere.” This is really well said and since things are changing so fast social media websites like Twitter allow journalists to connect more closely with other journalists. I think Twitter is really useful for breaking news scenarios when journalists and news organizations are trying go get the message out. If people want more information then they might go to the website of the Twitter page.

The Social Media Update 2014 raised some interesting points on their breakdown of who is using social media. It didn’t surprise me that Facebook was among the most popular. But I think this is only because like it mentions in a Teenager’s View on Social Media many people have a Facebook page but are they regularly posting on it, no. She says it’s almost considered weird to not have a Facebook yet people are not using this as their main social media sites. I agree with her when she says that Instagram is among one of the popular for teenagers through college. She raises some interesting points that on Instagram whatever you post does not show up in the Newsfeed, the content is higher quality and less frequent, and you are not pressured to follow someone back. I think the University of Texas student hits the nail on the head as she gives a breakdown social media sites.

I agree with Kayce as well about the Texas student and his perspective on Facebook in social media. Like himself, I don’t have Facebook and only utilize Instagram. The reason for that is solely the same that Kayce stated above me, that it allows people to capture moments and filter to perfection. Also I believe that Instagram totally gives the user privacy towards their page and posts. Unlike Facebook, when you make your page private on Instagram, all that is shared is your default picture and your followers. On Facebook, it portrays whatever has not been personally set private which becomes tedious and invading. Which is why I believe as well that the Texas student nailed it and made it super relatable.

I completely think that the Texas student hit the nail right on the head. It was actually a very humorous and interesting thing to read, especially because I could relate to it fully. I think the Facebook talk was the most spot on. It is the most used social media app still, but we don’t even really use it much anymore. It’s one of those things where we check randomly, untag yourself is awful pictures, and then sign off. Personally, like the student said, I like instagram the best. Pictures are beautiful, they capture moments, and they are filtered to perfection. I can also follow things that I want to, allowing myself to eliminate anything i find annoying or repetitive, which is something you can’t really avoid on Facebook. I’m not someone who uses that many social media applications, but reading about all the ones he touched upon, was really quite interesting to me, especially because I didn’t even know what some of them were.